On Saturday we held a memorial celebration of the life Nola Kate Reeler
Tony’s mother, who left us 2 weeks ago at the age of 87.

Her hand is one of the oldest Elijah and Daniel – her 2 great grandsons – will ever hold

Who was the oldest hand she ever held?
her Huguenot grandparents?
who left their grandparents in Europe
to come and grow grapes on the other side of the world?

What stories this hand has lived through
from her Afrikaner childhood in the Cape
to a home she and her husband made in a newly developing Rhodesia 60 years ago

A home which held the lives of her 3 children
her neighbours and friends and all of their children
members of the Benevolent Helping Hand, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Legal Aid Clinic
her political allies in her fight against Ian Smiths ‘illegal regime’
her dinners and celebrations,
the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas

The home she only left only a week before she died

On Saturday her children, and the children of her friends, and the friends of her children
whose lives she had touched
met in her home and spoke of the part she played in their growing
and her grandchildren spoke of the magic she had brought to theirs
weaving together the different threads this grand old lady
had loved, challenged, educated, inspired into being
and fed with her wonderful cooking

Three more of her great grandchildren will be born within the next 5 months

One day these new, innocent  young hands
will be the oldest hands a new life will touch
and their story – threaded together with all the stories that came before them
their light and dark,
the changes and challenges,
the love and laughter
will hold the continuum of our lives

tiny hands holding old fingers
carrying stories that touch through time

An eight-track poetry album entitled All Protocols Observed was unpacked yesterday by Zimbabwe Poetry for Human Rights at a Food for Thought session hosted by US Embassy Public Affairs section.

Though you can dance to it the tracks on the album address some of the serious challenges affecting our country. From the accumulating dirty debt, to ravaging HIV/AIDS as well as politicians abusing their mandate to represent the people. The messages on the album are straight to the point as no one can dispute the fact that every problem in the country so far has been addressed with an “Operation” or a “Commission” of some sort as highlighted in track 5 of the album “Ma Opareshoni nema Komishoni”. Since Independence a lot commissions and operations have been set up to respond to something or other. From Operation Murambatsvina that demolished people’s houses because they were deemed illegal structures to Operation Zuva Rabuda/Sunrise, which resulted in the slashing of many zeroes on our local currency.

The album can be accessed from Zimbabwe Poetry for Human Rights free of charge and the group is encouraging people to share it so that it reaches a wide audience. Poetry is a powerful tool to provoke thought.

Many artists have been silenced in Zimbabwe for speaking out too loudly about the injustices faced by ordinary people. The work of Zimbabwe Poetry for Human Rights has not been easy as their recent performance in Kadoma was met with resistance when youths from ZANU-PF shut down the event and accused the group of spreading regime change messages.

Toindepi – Where are we headed? is a short sixteen minutes documentary directed by Tenford Chitanana. The film won the Documentary Short Film Award at the Silicon Valley African Film Festival held in California, USA. The documentary focuses on the day to day hardships faced by young people in Zimbabwe after Operation Murambatsvina left them homeless and jobless. The film is a reflection of the shattered dreams of many young people in Zimbabwe who are struggling to make their presence felt in a society where decision-making is done by the elite and powerful. Operation Murambatsvina took place in 2005 leaving many young people wallowing in poverty as their sources of income were destroyed resulting in many resorting to crime and prostitution for survival.

The Sunshine Zimbabwe Project is a division of Silver Linings Trust offering vocational training and employment for adults and adolescents with special needs aged 18 years and above. The youths are trained in gardening, cooking, craft work, and ICT’s among other projects. Products, which they make for resale, include jam, craft and bead work, sunshine bags and other accessories made from recycled materials. The pictures shared in this blog are from a recent Open Day held by the Sunshine Zimbabwe Project at their offices in Borrowdale.

Jill Roberts represented Kubatana at the recent SHARE Beirut event.

SHARE Beirut is a weekend-long public, free and non-commercial hybrid event blending an Internet culture and technology related daytime conference with dynamic cutting-edge music festival by night. It will bring together hundreds of passionate people, forward-thinkers, cultural creatives, activists and artists from Lebanon as all around the world for talks and parties in 72 hours of powerful gathering to share ideas, knowledge and creativity.

Exhibition runs from 13 October – 19 October 2012.

The Cycle, a photographic exhibition about water and sanitation in the city of Harare, by Davina Jogi.

Davina Jogi is a freelance photojournalist from Harare. She focuses on telling daily life stories about Zimbabwe that are often not covered by international media, and has worked with a variety of local and international newspapers, magazines and NGOs.

She was awarded the 2012 Media and Advocacy Grant from Market Photo Workshop for which she photographed a story about Harare’s water and sanitation challenges, entitled The Cycle.

The Media and Advocacy Photography Mentorship
The Media and Advocacy Photography Mentorship is solely aimed at the development of photographers with an interest in documenting societal issues that might often go unacknowledged in the mainstream media.  Davina Jogi is the first recipient of the award and her mentor for the project was Jonathan Torgovnik.

About the Market Photo Workshop
The Market Photo Workshop is a Johannesburg-based school of photography, gallery and resource centre for practicing photographers. Since its establishment in 1989, the school has played an integral role in the training and growth of photographers from South Africa and further afield.

For more information
Davina Jogi: www.davinajogi.com